


Night 1, Track 1

by aameyalli



Category: Guild Wars 2, Guild Wars 2 (Video Game)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-06
Updated: 2020-01-28
Packaged: 2020-08-12 03:09:54
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,652
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20138617
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aameyalli/pseuds/aameyalli
Summary: Two moments with Trahearne and his husband.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> You can find my headcanons about the sylvari language and a wip glossary here: https://aameyalli.tumblr.com/tagged/sylvari-language-hc

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> 1312\. Trahearne takes Gil to Orr, and questions the decision.

They lay in silence on the bottom of the boat. Stiff, not touching, facing opposite directions, with Trahearne’s feet down by Gilwynne’s head, and Gil’s feet—well—a little past Trahearne’s elbows.

It had struck him plenty of times before how small Gil was.

When he fell from the Tree. When Caithe lifted him without effort and took him to the Menders. When they first spoke and he snapped at Trahearne, curled in on himself like a wounded baby animal. When Trahearne offered his hand for balance and Gil had to reach up to take it. When Gil fell asleep tucked up against his side as Trahearne tried to read him a book he found boring. 

When Trahearne left him behind, crying in his garden, and he vanished so quickly from sight, lost in flowers.

Seeing him again after years apart, Gil with alchemy-stained hands, a strong voice, and a new glow of bitterness in his eyes, he’d almost believed that Gil had grown. But he hadn’t. He was tiny. A gardener. Barely trained in combat. Delicate. Already hurt—hurt by Trahearne.

And Trahearne didn’t know anything about him. He hated that but it was true. He didn’t know why Gil had listened to Cadeyrn, why he'd joined the Nightmare Court, or why he'd come back from it. Why he’d pursued alchemy. Why his Tyrian still wasn't fluent. How he and Caithe had become so inseparable. What had happened to him to make his expressions so sharp and luminous. How much Trahearne was to blame for it. Or what Gil was thinking.

Trahearne had never been able to tell what he was thinking. He was as inscrutable as a bird, and as fragile, and as vain, and—Pale Mother, what were they doing?

“Trahearne?” Gil’s eyes were open, bright as molten metal against the darkness of his face. He wasn’t looking at Trahearne but straight up, past the pale sweep of the sail, at the night sky. “Orri sere’se wahán?” _Are the constellations different in Orr?_

A dull pang shot through Trahearne. “You can’t see them. There’s a—shadow over the island, all the time. But yes, I imagine they would be. A little bit.”

Gil gave a small, dubious hum.

“I wish you could,” said Trahearne, quieter. “I miss the stars.”

Abruptly, Gil switched into accented Tyrian. “Sounds like a challenging. I will find them for you.”

“I don’t think you can. I don’t think we’ll see them until… If it’s even possible…”

Gil closed his eyes again having not even glanced at him, so Trahearne trailed off.

He breathed in deeply. Black water rasped against the sailboat’s hull, its rhythm unpredictable but unbroken. Trahearne wished he could be deep and cold and serene like that. Or airy like Gilwynne, skimming over the surface of things, with his weightlessness and foreign voice, seemingly untouched—by Nightmare, by loneliness, by any of it. But he couldn’t be. He could feel Orr slinking up towards the horizon, sticky and foul, and his heart fluttered so spastically in his chest that it felt like it would leave bruises.

“It’s not too late to turn back,” he murmured. “You can go home, where it’s safe and—and beautiful.”

“Is not safe there,” Gil said, without opening his eyes.

“Not the Grove, then. Lion’s Arch. Hoelbrak. Anywhere. You don’t have to come with me. I’m quite used to travelling alone, and you’re—” The image of Gil as a sapling, wide-eyed, brushing a loose mass of curls out of his face, flickered in Trahearne’s mind, and he censored himself quickly. “—Not a soldier.”

“And you are?”

Trahearne could have argued with him, pointed out that he was a Firstborn Valiant and it was more or less the same thing, but he got the feeling Gil wouldn’t like that. He’d never been fond of the word “destiny,” in any language.

Gil rolled onto his side and pulled his knees up towards his chest, making himself even smaller. The curve of his spine brushed against Trahearne’s ankle, a single point of warmth in the draining cold night. Neither of them shifted away. “Go be asleep,” Gil said.

Trahearne smiled at that, just a little bit. He hadn’t noticed it exactly, but he’d missed the way Gil said things, jamming words against each other like puzzle pieces that didn’t fit together. He’d missed it almost as much as he’d missed the stars.

Obediently, he tipped his head back against the chilly, concave planks of the hull.

“Da’ya,” said Gil. _Goodnight._

“Da’ya Gilwynne,” Trahearne whispered.

He closed his eyes and listened to the scratching of the water and Gil’s steady breathing until he let it out with a soft purring sound and settled into sleep.

In the dark, blindly, Gil’s hand moved to find Trahearne’s.


	2. Another Night Falls

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> 1327\. The Commander kills Scarlet. Trahearne makes a promise.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> stumbled on an old draft in my google drive and polished it up! i miss these two sometimes...

While the unpiloted Breachmaker drilled into the sea bed, Trahearne sat hunched over his desk in Caer Aval, tapping his fingers. Gil padded up and placed a hand on his. The reassuring pressure was enough to stop his drumming.

“Are you well, Trahearne?”

“It’s only nerves.”

“Nothing, then.” It was deadpan, but Trahearne could see the tightness around his eyes—affection, and concern. Teasingly, Gil started to remove his hand. Trahearne moved faster, threading his fingers through Gil’s and then pulling him forward so he stumbled against the chair.  _ “Va’i!  _ Don’t move me. I am being nice to you.”

“I don’t think you are.”

“And  _ you  _ are being difficult.” He ghosted his free hand over Trahearne’s tense, aching shoulders.

Trahearne sighed, relaxing into the touch. “The Commander will kill Ceara soon, if they haven’t already.”

“Scarlet,” Gil reminded him.

Trahearne winced. He knew why Gil insisted on using the stage name. He didn’t want to admit that it was their sister who had done all of this, either. Trahearne hadn’t known Ceara well, but he remembered the swell of pride when he heard she’d been accepted into an asuran College, and he had a memory, distant and hazy, of a very young Gil sitting on her workbench in the Grove, repeating the names of chemicals back to her, uncertain and thickly accented. She’d been rude as a sapling, but never dangerous. Never cruel. And he’d never doubted she cared about her siblings, even if she didn’t express it well. Perhaps it was cowardly not to use her name. Or perhaps it no longer applied to her.

“Scarlet. Yes.”

“The Commander will be fine.” Gil slid his hand forward to rest on his collarbone, soft and stabilizing. “They are a dragon killer, and they have friends with them. The son of Eir and… some other bloody-minded babies, I don’t remember.”

“I doubt they are  _ babies,” _ said Trahearne. “The Commander said they were very promising young people.”

_ “B’ani,”  _ said Gil, dismissively.  _ Saplings. _

There was a moment of comfortable silence. He looked at Gil, quiet and serene with his chin on Trahearne’s shoulder, and wondered, not for the first time, what he was thinking about. He never seemed to get lost in his head in the same way Trahearne did, and he didn’t explain how he came to his ideas. Maybe the in-betweens were just too hard to translate. One question in particular tugged at him though.

“Are you truly so confident in the Commander’s plan?” he ventured.

“Do you not trust them?”

Trahearne’s glow flared. “Yes! Yes, of course I trust them. It’s only that… killing Ceara— _ Scarlet _ —now… It feels too little, too late. The Pact was formed to fight Dragons, yes, but we do that in defense of Tyria. Lion’s Arch has been undefended. We  _ left  _ it undefended. Surely you must be doubting too. Do you think we could have prevented this? If we had sent our forces in at the start?”

Gil looked away, and didn’t answer.

“How can we pick and choose which lives to save, which battles to fight? The Commander would say all of them. You would say none. I—I cannot make these decisions alone, Gil.”

Gil pulled away from the hug. “Trahearne…”

“I’m not angry with either of you,” Trahearne said. “I’m just… This position, it’s…”

“Then why did you take it.” Gil’s voice was cooling fast.

The truth lodged hard and painful in his throat.  _ What else was I good for?  _ “Someone had to. Our world is at stake. It was not an honor I felt free to turn down.”

Gil was quiet again, for long seconds. Then his arms twined around Trahearne’s shoulders again, and he pressed a kiss to Trahearne’s temple. “Okay.”

Trahearne turned his head, trying to see if Gil looked reproachful, or sad, or reassured, but his husband ducked away faster, in a swish of dark curls and yellow silk.

No choice but to ask. “Do you resent my work for the Pact?”

“If I did,” said Gil, each word dropping clean and heavy as water, “it would be because I want you safe.”

“Oh.”

“ _ T’ama,  _ I want you  _ here.  _ I don’t want to see you swallowed up by everyone who dies.”  _ _ He finally turned and showed his face. There was a harsh, burning light in his eyes, his mouth a dark unhappy slash. “Trahearne—” He seemed unable to finish.

“I love you,” said Trahearne. “I will… try not to blame myself for Lion’s Arch. Overmuch. This is Ceara’s work, of course.”

Gil seemed to be waiting for something else.

“I will not be swallowed up,” Trahearne said. “I promise you.”

_ “Atha’la,”  _ said Gil, and the awful look went away.  _ Thank you. _

He went away into the kitchen. To make tea, by the familiar clink and jostle of kettle and cups. Slowly, Trahearne slumped forward, and he started tapping on the desk again. Across the sea, Lion’s Arch was burning, and he felt certain, somehow, that this was not the worst of it, that something else was buried here and soon to surface, and that he had just made a promise he could not keep.


End file.
